Man Wearing Skirt Protested, Censored

March 24, 2011

This photo of a male wearing a skirt in protest of restrictive gender norms caused a shitstorm of outrage from transgenders after it was posted on the Equality Maryland facebook page. From one activist: “Do the cisgender people who posted this image realize how insulting it is to transsexual women? It’s no different than if I attended, say, one of Martin Luther King’s rally in blackface and claimed to be an ally. It’s insulting.”

“We aren’t interested in redefining what it means to be a boy or a girl.” complained another.

“I think part of the issue here is that you can’t get past the fact that most trans women generally aren’t invested in caring about men stepping outside of acceptable masculinity.”

“The haters are going to have a field day with this pic. Again, mocking the trans again. So, so, cis.”

Trans-jacktivists have become increasingly vocal about protesting media images of gender-nonconforming males and drag performers. This despite the fact that crossdressers and drag queens are included under the political banner of transgenderism. In recent months trans have protested an actor wearing a wig on the Craig Ferguson Show, protested and attempted to censor the Comedy Relief benefit performance of Susan Boyle’s duet with drag performer Peter Kay, and protested a Drag Bingo benefit for an LGBT rights organization.

Trans activism increasingly centers around protesting males who crossdress and impersonate females without claiming an internal self-reported male “female identity”, as well as media images of transgenders who fail to conform to conservative female gender roles and presentations. We are witnessing the increasing conservatism of the transgender movement, the prime tenet of which is the belief that males and females have differently gendered neurological brain “sex identities”, and that such speculative brain differences form a biological basis for sexist cultural gender roles. Transgenders who identify as non-binary “genderqueers”, and the largest demographic of the transgender umbrella: heterosexual male crossdressers are not only being pushed to the margins politically, but are actively being shunned and silenced by the current transactivist movement. This reflects a general tendency in trans people to consider some trans (themselves) “true” transgenders (males with “female brains”) and others “false” transgenders (pretenders and “mere” female impersonators). The trend of censoring images of all people who fail to follow conservative social gender traditions is the latest iteration of the highly conservative and sexist transgender philosophy, as is the trend of protesting gender performers who do not claim to possess an “opposite-sexed brain”.

Autumn Sandeen "Good"- claims to have "female brain"

Peter Kay "Transphobic"- does not claim to have "female brain"

The photo of the young man in a skirt was removed from Equality Maryland’s website as a result of the outcry from trans activists.

67 Responses to “Man Wearing Skirt Protested, Censored”

That’s fascinating. Now see, that guy is my sister, LOL! I don’t have a problem with male allies questioning gender norms or supporting equality. I do have a problem with trans activists who seem to want to enforce and advocate for more rigid gender roles. The fact that anybody would complain about this photo is evidence of that.

The comment, “We aren’t interested in redefining what it means to be a boy or a girl,” is really in conflict with feminism. Most of us are very interested in redefining what gender means because most of us have been trapped in it, not by choice but by birth, and many of the stereotypes about girls are very harmful.

Not only do trans activists want to enforce rigid gender roles, they claim that gender roles are biologically created.
Transgenderism is anything but feminist. A gay man on that post at Pam’sHouseBlend wrote “”I honestly think it would be way easier for trans people if society could move on past the binary gender stereotypes and binary gender roles ”
And a male transgender replied:
“Could you kindly inform us when the next edition of The Transsexual Empire is going to be released?”

I’d like to point out that the mainstream “activists” do not speak for all of us. The people who caused the outcry against this image are idiots. Most of the “Transgenderism” (as you put it) that I’ve seen actively supports feminism. Those among us that do not are a fringe (but rather loud and prolific) group.

The definition of being transgender or transsexual is to have a gender identity that is different to the one assigned to you at birth, nothing more or less, it has little to do with gender roles or stereotypes. This means that and end to stereotypes does not in any way mean an end to our community.

A gay man on that post at Pam’sHouseBlend wrote “”I honestly think it would be way easier for trans people if society could move on past the binary gender stereotypes and binary gender roles ”
And a male transgender replied:
“Could you kindly inform us when the next edition of The Transsexual Empire is going to be released?”

Ugh, goddamn.

I’m discovering from reading Whipping Girl that there’s a big fat schism in trans-theory between the “subversist” queer theorists who want to “abolish gender” “shatter the binary” and “queer the system” and hardline MTFs/FTMs because the queer theorists say MTFs/FTMs are selecting a conservative gender role.

While I agree that hardline MTFs/FTMs reinforce a conservative view of gender, I find both to be anti-woman. If queer theorists were right that we can abolish gender and “queer the system” then women are necessarily politically irrelevant. We already look like that most hated of things: Women. It means we’re *inherently* right wing. An idea I reject completely.

On the other hand, hardline FTMs and MTFs *are* propping up patriarchal conservative views of gender by attributing them to “biology” and evo-psych brain scan bullshit, as well as reifying femininity as inseparable from woman.

The definition of being transgender or transsexual is to have a gender identity that is different to the one assigned to you at birth, nothing more or less, it has little to do with gender roles or stereotypes.

That means it has everything to do with gender roles and stereotypes. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to redefine anything. How about trying to operate outside of the system?

Thank you alexthesane and seranodebunker for your interesting comments. And might I add that you both have excellent nicks, lol.

Alex, I wish I could see evidence of the feminist transgender perspective you see. To me, the very definition of trans that you offer: “The definition of being transgender or transsexual is to have a gender identity that is different to the one assigned to you at birth, nothing more or less..” means the definition is meaningless. Because all females have a different gender identity to the one assigned at birth since gender is a culturally created system designed to place biological females into a subhuman class, one that is enforced upon us by threat of (and actual) violence since birth.
Gender is an anti-female culturally created fiction. It doesn’t exist independent of sexism. It is a function of sexism.

Seranodebunker- I agree that all transgender is anti-woman and inherently politically right-wing.

Grabbing a big bucket of popcorn and settling in to watch the show – the trans reaction is hilarious, proving once again they want to uphold a strict code of gender binaries, well, bwain gender binaries or whatever the fuck they make up this week.

The main amusement is that trans (real bwain twanz™) are getting terribly picky as to who now joins their clubhouse. I guess they figured they wouldn’t be special snowflakes if too many joined; they must win Oppression Olympics at all costs. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, they saw the radfem critique of the conflicting ideologies that is the gender freakshow under the trans umbrella? Nah, that would be too much like thinking and analysis. I’m going with wanting to be the most special of snowflakes as the prime motivation.

Of course, they won’t actually want to share “woman”; all us FABs will eventually be kicked out Club Woman because we aren’t dainty enough. Don’t laugh…

A gay friend of mine wore dresses and skirts back in the early 80’s as simply articles of clothing like the man above in the skirt. He didn’t imbue the clothing with the sex role connotations that the conservative trans-activists seem to, nor did he ”get off” on the clothing. I can’t help but note though that there are gay men who have always had a problem with Lesbian dress (i.e. rejection of male-created feminity).

The ”identity” of these ultra-conservative m2ts seems so very fragile, they have so much invested in hetero-patriarchal sex roles and the rigid oppressive dress code. Such is the irony of this that Stepford trans comes to mind! Their reactionary politics are so in keeping with these neo-conservative times.

This ”female/male brain” crap is no different to the western patri-scientific racism that proposed that there was such a thing as a ”negroid brain” and a ”caucasian brain” etc. This makes them, in my opinion, the true representatives of the Transexual Empire Raymond wrote about.

@ alexthesaneThe definition of being transgender or transsexual is to have a gender identity that is different to the one assigned to you at birth, nothing more or less, it has little to do with gender roles or stereotypes.

Huh? How on earth can you have ‘something different to’ to ‘something it is not based on’? Meaningless gibberish.

The trans concept, by its very nature, has to acknowledge the gender roles in order to do the opposite/contrary of what is expected. Otherwise you are just a bunch of nutters playing dress-ups (sometimes) with body parts.

Or, is the latest trans theory-of-the-week acknowledging the biological sex that you mimic is the only goal, in which case, “feel like a woman” gets blown completely out of the water, and you are just a bunch of body dysmorphics.

There’s a big difference between internal gender and enforced gender roles in society. And, let’s face it, gender is a hard thing to define. I’ve seen as many definitions of “gender” as I have read articles on the subject. I apologize if my comment was confusing, but that’s the nature of the beast. The issue with discussing trans people is that there is a huge range of experiences. First off, I’d like to address the “mimic the binary” thing, because most trans people I talk to don’t do much of mimicking anything and just go with what they want to do. And I for one don’t do anything with the binary: I can’t be the “opposite/contrary” of what I expected because there really is no opposite to my identity.

In my personal experience internal gender is a very real thing that has nothing to do with how you were raised and even with the social roles or stereotypes you appear to conform to. Exploring my gender has been a much bigger thing than “just playing dress-up”. I personally experience myself in a way that does not conform to any definition of male or female I have ever seen, and even exploring testing the boundaries of those definitions feels wrong for me. This is different from the gender identities of (taking GallusMag’s example) cisgendered women, who, even though they may reject the social roles forced on them, still (from people I’ve talked to) identify strongly as women and nothing else.

While very little about the way gender is performed in society is anything more than a construction, I still think that there is evidence that there is something intrinsic to one’s gender identity. This means that it is possible for one’s socially assigned gender to be at odds with one’s true gender, which is what I was trying to get at with my definition. I was simply trying to separate out what the experience of being trans was from the political ideas being imposed on the trans community by this conversation.

This is different from the gender identities of (taking GallusMag’s example) cisgendered women, who, even though they may reject the social roles forced on them, still (from people I’ve talked to) identify strongly as women and nothing else.

You are mistaken. No woman identifies as woman and nothing else. Women identify themselves as human first and foremost. Human. That is what we have been arguing with men about for about three thousand years now.
Which would explain why feminism is the radical assertion that women are human.
The “and nothing else” part of your comment is puzzling to me. Women are not the one dimensional creatures that your comment requires.

Gender is not “performed.” It is the product of socializing forces. It is the product of being raised by people as male or female, and socialized by them and by society as male or female FROM BIRTH. That last part is crucial. Psychologists tell us that 95% of the personality is formed by age 5. Therefore, the greatest socializing forces, including regarding gender role pressures/expectations/trainings upon us are those we encounter up to age 5, because of the neuropathways we are developing the most of up until that age. So gender is not something one can take on and off at will, as with a costume or acting role. We can modify to some extent beyond age 5, but not by much.

The belief that gender is a performance, not surprisingly, comes from a gay male. And of course: because males, as oppressors within the gender binary, do not experience and therefore are not aware, as women are, of the full scope and complexity of oppression based on one’s sex, and how it affects a person’s life. Men generally go around oblivious to sex role oppression, because they don’t live it, just as white people generally are oblivious to almost all of racism because we are not on the receiving end of racial oppression in white-dominant society. In gay male society, there are men (crossdressers) who “perform” feminity, or believe that they do, because they simply mimic stereotypes of women. But they are not truly performing feminity, because women are not those stereotypes. They just don’t realize, as gays, how much more women are and how much more diverse women are, than those stereotypes. Hence the false belief that it is possible to “perform” gender.

You may not realize it, but it is profoundly patriarchal to believe that gender is something that a person can perform. It is to be oblivious to how profound the socializing/enslaving forces really are upon women, and how profound the socializing/”en-mastering” forces really are upon men: how much they turn men into slave masters in every aspect of their beings, from their every thought to their every behavior.

@alexthesane-
“There’s a big difference between internal gender and enforced gender roles in society.”
Gender itself is culturally created. It’s the very system of social rules that you hoped to escape by altering your social role via transgenderism. If gender was internal, there would be no need to alter one’s physical appearance or social role. And if it was purely sex-based (physical) there would be no need for name changes and pronoun changes.
Gender is a system of social rules designed to separate those who are biologically male from those biologically female. Rules designed to keep female bodied humans subordinate to male bodied humans.
And you very well know that. It’s what you found so ill-fitting as a female bodied person.

It’s horrific the way you dismiss the world full of women under gender with your statement that gender identity is different from the “gender identities of cisgendered women, who, even though they may reject their gender, still identify as female.” (paraphrasing). According to you only females who disguise themselves as male, or who claim to have “male brains” have truly rejected gender. Do you know how offensive that is? How racist? How victim blaming? Acceptance of one’s physical reality and declining to disguise it does not make one “cis-gendered” or “cis-raced” or cis-abled”. Accepting one’s biologic reality does not mean one accepts or approves of the social consequences imposed on that reality.

“most trans people I talk to don’t do much of mimicking anything and just go with what they want to do” Most trans people are heterosexual men who crossdress for the sexual pleasure they derive from visualizing themselves occupying the sexualized image they project onto females. Statistically, under the trans umbrella, that’s just fact. And there are THOUSANDS of sites/discussions/groups/classes on how to “sound female” or “act female” or “act male”.

Gender is a set of socially imposed rules and behaviors designed to impose slavery on females. Sex is a biological reproductive category. Any female who claims they are “mentally male” or male who claims “mental femaleness” is claiming that human brains are essentially different based on one’s reproductive biology. It’s no different from claims of “negroid brains” as Purplerage stated above. It’s incredibly offensive.

“I personally experience myself in a way that does not conform to any definition of male or female I have ever seen…” No shit. See there you go conflating biology with gender again. Male and female are simply biological reproductive categories that every human (or at least 99.999% of us who are not born with a disorder of sexual development) are born into. You are female. Sorry hon but you’re not a special snowflake. You’re just like every other female. Welcome home sister.

“I was simply trying to separate out what the experience of being trans was from the political ideas being imposed on the trans community by this conversation.”
Why would you separate the experience of gender from trans-gender? How could you?

What does “cis”-whatever even mean? Where does the term come from, please? Everyone seems to know it but me, but I haven’t seen a dictionary explanation of it (except the Urban Dictionary, which wasn’t very helpful with etiology.)

It’s horrific the way you dismiss the world full of women under gender with your statement that gender identity is different from the “gender identities of cisgendered women, who, even though they may reject their gender, still identify as female.” (paraphrasing). According to you only females who disguise themselves as male, or who claim to have “male brains” have truly rejected gender. Do you know how offensive that is? How racist? How victim blaming? Acceptance of one’s physical reality and declining to disguise it does not make one “cis-gendered” or “cis-raced” or cis-abled”. Accepting one’s biologic reality does not mean one accepts or approves of the social consequences imposed on that reality.

I fear that the perception of transgender as being transgressive in and of itself is currently the dominant paradigm in gender theory. Raewyn Connell wrote an introductory book to gender in which she claims this more or less overtly. For example, she cites the case of a cross-dressing male with silicon breast implants whose partner fucked him up the ass but didn’t want to have the same thing done to him because he reportedly didn’t want to have a penis near his butt. Connell thinks this has nothing to do with homophobia (hardyharhar)- misogyny isn’t even mentioned. There’s no criticism of the fact that the same man left the cross-dresser for a 16-year-old girl.
There’s also no criticism of the reasons men paid the cross-dresser to have sex with him. There’s no doubt about the fact that Connell thinks this is very interesting- never mind that it’s gender fetishim and probably happens in every big city.

All in all, it seems to be a very simple way of thinking, probably engaged in by very privileged people (I really cannot get over the fact that Connell was fascinated by men paying cross-dressers/transpeople to have sex. Is she living under a rock?).

That’s not exactly the only thing that bothered me. There’s also, IIRC, calling Freud not exactly a feminist (in the sense of not exactly developed), the same Freud who negated the wide-spread sexual abuse of children to continue to have a career, and claiming that the women of the first wave were essentialist. I guess that’s because they didn’t write books about gender identity but were concerned first and foremost with their oppression as women. First wavers knew that gender identity was a construct- otherwise many of them wouldn’t have campaigned for equal rights. They understood themselves as human- obviously, nowadays, some people think that you can only be transgressive if you play with gender. Seriously, people, that’s weak. Try to break the mold, don’t search for one that’s different.

“This is different from the gender identities of cisgendered women, who, even though they may reject the social roles forced on them, still (from people I’ve talked to) identify strongly as women and nothing else.”

Well gee, a couple of times, I’ve forgotten all about being a woman and actually identified as a full human being.

I don’t “identify” as a woman, I know that I am one because it’s an empirically verifiable fact. (Using my fabulous powers of observation, I have also determined that I am not a giant sequoia — although how do I really know? I’ve never been tested for a possible interkingdom condition.)

I didn’t come up with this line, but I’ve heard other feminists say, “just because you stand in the garage and call yourself a car doesn’t make you one.”

When I told this to a “trans” friend (FtM), she said, “how hurtful!” So that’s the best they can come up with…that it hurts their feelings.

Another frustrating thing is that the generation today doesn’t seem to understand the difference between “identifying as a woman” (uhhh….total queer theory!) and being “woman-identified” (totally challanging to male supremacy). In fact, I’ve been asked on several occassions, “there is a difference?!”

And I HATE being told gender/sex is a SPEMTRUM, too. It is something that fucking HAPPENS to you.

Speaking of reactionary garbage from the trans community, here’s a post I just read on Dirt’s blog:
“I myself don’t understand butch lesbians at all. Why do they hide their femininty behind short haircuts, swear and drink like men and act all pushy where ever they go.
It’s like they hang on their female rights yet stand aside when ever they are required to act like women.
At least FTMs try to act like men, fit in to the men’s world which is much harder way of living than a butch female lesbian could ever imagine.”

That is SUCH a typical comment from a transgender. The very type who are protesting gents in skirts.
What trans don’t realize yet, is that the more the public learns, the less they’re buying. As comforting as the sexism implicit in transgender may be to right wing conservatives, the rest of us have moved on from “male and female brains” and “female and male essences” and “internal gender identity” and all the other bulllllllllllllshit the sexist conservative transgender proponents are spewing.

Now this is ridiculous… Even if this guy doesn’t identify as trans, why does that mean he can’t wear a skirt? Can’t skirts be manly as well as womanly? Clothes have no gender, just because there’s a socially reinforced idea that men wear certain things and women wear certain things doesn’t mean anything… if a woman can wear pants, a man can wear a skirt.
I identify as trans, by the way. But this guy clearly isn’t making any statement relating to trans; he’s making a statement that he can wear clothing that’s typically thought of as women’s, but still be a man. I don’t understand what’s so bad and offensive about that. There’s so much more to being transgender than outside appearance… although no one here seems to want to listen to that viewpoint so I won’t bother. Just wanted to share that we don’t all think the way these whiners do.

Yes that’s what the trannies said. Mixing suit and tie with skirt was “offensive” and not the act of a trans ally. Although I guess what you’re saying here is that he would have been a better ally if he has worn lipstick, fuck-me pumps, and garter belts with that suit and tie -he would have been a better trans-ally to you?

The mix-and-match is not a problem at all, and if one is to fuck up the notion of ‘gendered’ clothes, then this is the way to do it. No actual problem on that front.

It is difficult to explain ‘my problem’ because I think it stems from my gut instinct about that photo. Which to me, probably because of the strong phallus symbol of the tie, looks as if the dude wants to retain all the privileges and rights of ‘male’, but just with a bit of extra freedom to dress for fun.

Is the dude meant to be doing a trans ally thing, or an anti-gendered clothing thing? It does not seem to work from any angle really.

The trans position is to adhere to gendered clothing, the genderqueers go for the mixy-matchy. Either way, it has it’s reference point with the concept of gendered clothing. My only one comment was focused on the tie, which is dude-plus in the gendered clothing stakes.

I personally don’t really give a fuck about clothing, only what’s comfortable. Not interested in conforming or rebelling with ‘gendered’ clothing. Happy to ignore the entire stinking cesspool.

Also, the majority of trans are hetero dudes who get sexually aroused by wearing “female” attire. Only a very small minority of trans are female. And since the entire concept of gender being a biological reality, rather than culturally created, is inherently anti-female and “pro-dude” i fail to see how “pro-dude” makes for a poor “trans- ally”. All trans-allys are pro-dude.

I also see ‘unrest’ afoot within twanz, that the M2Ts are not happy with the F2Ts (a few reasons) but the bottom line is that the M2Ts feel as if they are the rightful winners of the Oppression Olympics, yaddah yaddah twansplaining…

At the end of the day, M2Ts are just being the MRA dudes they have always been. No surprises there.

I agree with you Fab, this guy does not come across as having a clue to me about rejecting gender roles. For you, it’s his tie. For me, it’s his beard. Yes, beards are natural, but men who wear them usually come across as being very into their maleness and male privilege. And it’s his body language, and just a whole bunch of things that are hard to pin down. It’s like he’s trying to say he’s pro-feminist and anti-stereotypes by *just* putting on a skirt, without having questioned much of patriarchal training. He strikes me as having a long ways to go in developing a pro-feminist consciousness, a lot of feminist reading to do. And that is probably what pissed off the trannies. He doesn’t look like he’s trying to reject male stereotypes much, just the skirt, but isn’t trying to look stereotypically female either, like they usually try to. So this boy’s making some effort but is annoying or pissing off everyone on some level (except maybe GM🙂

There’s a big difference between internal gender and enforced gender roles in society. And, let’s face it, gender is a hard thing to define. I’ve seen as many definitions of “gender” as I have read articles on the subject. I apologize if my comment was confusing, but that’s the nature of the beast.

That is the nature of all mythical beasts.
Those of us who embrace reality are aware that gender rolls are stuffed with various fillings depending on who bakes them up to suit their personal taste.

Since I’ve seen the topic of “genderqueer” come up, do you all know of any websites (or even books) specifically debunking this phenomenon? I am encountering more and more young women who claim they are not really women, they are “queer.” It sounds like a fad Judith Butler started (I could be wrong).

Let me say this again….how can we have a WOMEN’S MOVEMENT without WOMEN?!

What does it matter what clothes one wears. Most of what women claim as theirs was orig made for mens wear. So if a woman wears trowsers or a guy wears a skirt – So What. In many parts of the world, men wear a type of skirt. IMHO it is only in Puritanical America that there seems to be a problem.

“…it is only in Puritanical America that there seems to be a problem.”

Thankfully, religion is on the decline in America. This is all due to the fact that those born beginning in the late 1970s left the church in droves when they grew up, due to homophobia and sexism. It is time to welcome the coming of a secular – humanist United States.

And because churches and synagogues are now going “liberal” and welcoming lesbians and gays, and allowing women to wear pants and become clergy, etc., to soften their images for public viewing and prop up their dwindling congregations, many congregations are growing.

Sadly, I see so many, especially lesbians who slithered back into religion via their AA programs offering them a “higher power,” as their first fatal step back into the patriarchal make-believe, I don’t think churches are dwindling, but picking up greater and greater influence across the U.S. More and more Dems are invoking God at every turn.

[…] be female). Heresy! Get your wig on now, mister! How DARE an American wear whatever he wants- it’s transphooooobic for males to wear skirts! It’s transphooobic for gays to perform drag shows! It should be outlawed! Only those who claim […]

It’s hard for me to even respond to this because I hold you in such high regard that your kind words are making me feel veklempt. Discovering your work was literally a life-changing experience for me. Thank you.

I wear a skirt Mon-Sun…any type of weather.Im very straight…my g/f is next to me as i type this,and she is straight,not that has anything to do with this.She likes me in a skirt and other types of ”female” known clothes.We even go shopping together looking at clothes.She’ll point out to me when we are shopping,a top or a skirt or a bra.She is very cool with it all.Really,its now a big deal for us and im sure many other people do as well.So dont sweat it people.
have fun and enjoy life…….

I can’t really speak for anyone else but I’ll say as for me, I’m happy with people crossdressing or wearing whatever the heck they want (goodness knows by official standards I “crossdress” daily). People should be free to put on whatever costumes they want to put on. Of course they should know what baggage attends to it, but. Be open, be proud. And I don’t think anyone on this site has ever complained about say, drag queens.

What I have a problem with is males who don’t just crossdress (that part is fine by me, because I think gender as a set of expectations should eventually go away) but rather they claim that somehow they are “women” inside.

That’s offensive because it’s only possible if they assume that there exists some “woman” way of being in the brain, such that they (who aren’t biological women by the genitalia) can claim to “recognize that they have it” and so claim that they’re “really women.” That’s putting me in a box, and the fact is that the stereotypes they cough up when pressed on “so what is the woman brain then, how did you know you have it” are all things I emphatically DO NOT identify with remotely, and yet, of course, I’m a woman because it’s obvious due to my genitalia from birth, I’m put in the “lesser, you can’t do X Y and Z” category without me having to say anything about “identity” at all.

I do also know some men in my community who openly transgress by wearing skirts and yet fully claiming to be men, I think THAT is truly transgression (in a good way!) and I don’t have any problem with it.

Some of them have sons who too don’t cut their hair and feel free to wear pink (even if it’s pants!) and got some horrible letters to the editor in my local paper because those kids showed up at some antiwar protests, and it was all about how can you abuse your son by letting him wear pink, and some other letters about maybe he’s trans*! but you know, he’s just a boy who likes to wear pink, so what if you can’t tell his gender right off, he’ll let you know, already! As a girl who was often mistaken for a boy similarly, I just have to say, abandon “gender,” let everyone wear whatever the heck they want, and be done with it. But the insecurity of people who are so upset that they can’t judge which of two distinct boxes full of stereotypes to put you in… whatever just get OVER it, y’know?🙂

Having lived and worked in/around the LGB combut munity in Brighton UK for the last decade I’ve never felt the appended T was a good fit. I’ve met trans folk (MtF) who are decent enough people their dilemma seems to me fundamentally different from that of gays: ‘coming out’ is (still, sadly) a confrontational, subversive act; whereas transitioning seems to me to be captulation, and (at least in the case of MtF) they (mostly) love to trumpet what a journey and hard work it’s been. All in all it plays more to stereotypical male behaviour than female: as if women aren’t dealing with as much if not more shit but taking it in their stride. Actually, the ‘cult’of MtF trans strikes me as almost hyper-masculine: a kind of ‘openly-closeted’ group that set themselves apart from and above ‘straight’ folk – wanting to conflate masculine privilege with minority ‘protected’ status (unsure about my language there – hope the sense of what I’m trying to say translates). On the FtM front things seem remarkably quiet. I’ve yet to meet (knowingly) such a person but their relative silence also seems to play to conventional gender norms… I’m guessing you ladies’ feelings are much the same either way but I’d be interested to hear if you’ve had similar experience of MtF vs FtM…

And on a related subject – Bois. No experience of this ‘cult’ over here – only aware of them from reading Ariel Levy, is this an LA thing? Seems like a curious melange of trans, women who buy into conventional ideals of ‘beauty’ and stereotypical lesbian (insofar as they’re going the surgery route to create the flat-chest ‘little boy’ model look beloved of gay fashion overlords whilst embracing the worst excesses of male behaviour (whilst retaining the dubious privilege of female ‘underdog’ sstatus). And I’m happy to be called out on this if I’m misconstruing it – like I say, I’ve not come across such a person, in person, only read of it via Levy and curious.

And going back to the subject of the post; isn’t the fact of Trans guys claiming exclusive rights to cross-dress revealing? Hissy fit or what?!

And I say, to the activists who object… Sheesh, people. He is not challenging your right to exist as a woman by wearing a skirt. Did it not occur to you that perhaps he simply likes to wear a skirt? I don’t see how it challenges your rights, his wearing a skirt.
Of course, this is coming from me, and you probably don’t care particularly about the opinions of a teenage transboy currently attired in a blueberry-print skirt himself, but I’m gonna say what I think anyway: He has as much right as you do to wear that skirt. And trust me, he’s most likely not trying to challenge your rights in any way whatsoever. Much more likely, he is trying to help. I rest my case.